It was a tremendous shock when earlier this year District 9 director Neill Blomkamp posted to Instagram a number of pieces of concept art for a new Alien film; and it was even more of a shock when, a short time after that, Twentieth Century Fox said they were greenlighting Blomkamp’s vision for the franchise’s new entry. Then Chappie crashed and burned, and there was an imperative for Blomkamp to deliver not just a great chapter of the Alien saga, but to salvage some of that District 9 mojo. But now there’s mojo-interuptus as Blomkamp’s Alien has had to take a back seat to Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus 2Alien: Paradise Lost.

Blomkomp annouced the news via Twitter (naturally):

alien is kinda holding/ pending prometheus 2. So I shall be working on other things… as much as I love the xeno- and Lt ripley

That’s a bad hit for Blomkamp considering the aforementioned Chappie, he really needed the pick-me-up of getting to live the dream of making an Alien movie. Still, it’s not all that surprising. It was just last month as hype around The Martian started heating up that we learned that Scott was planning on making Prometheus 2 his next film. When it was officially announced that the project was going to be called Alien: Paradise Lost, the fan community openly speculated as to what the name change meant for Blomkamp’s Alien.

Blomkamp’s Alien being put in suspended animation also provokes some interesting questions about the nature of Paradise Lost, like whether or not Scott’s new film is more connected to the Alien mythology than Prometheus was. Blomkamp’s Alien was definitely going to be more connected to that world with both Riply (Sigourney Weaver) and Hicks (Michael Biehn) being featured prominently in the release artwork, and Fox is notoriously gun-shy about throwing too much money at a franchise until it has proven itself. Chances are that Blomkamp’s Alien will be back on schedule when and if Paradise Lost is a box office smash.

In the meantime, be on the look out of Alien: Paradise Lost sometime in 2017.

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